Image:
Bronze Apis: E39829 C

Notes

This bronze statuette (16x14x6 cm) represents the god Apis - portrayed as a bull with a solar disk between its horns, protected by an uraeus - cobra. It may be a votive figurine, presented as an offering to the god - in this way a donor expressed devotion and the hope for the god’s kindness. Such statuettes might have been placed at the temple or used as an amulet – a symbol of a personal piety to the Apis. The statuette, probably Ptolemaic Period (305-30 BC) or even later replica, was donated to the Museum by Ernest Wunderlich in 1935.

Ernest Wunderlich was a businessman and one of the Trustees of the Australian Museum, (1914-1926) as well as a significant amateur collector of Egyptian antiquities.